I spend a lot of my time online, reading forums, blogs etc. I noticed that most of the time I'm unable to read a long article or post, even if I see that it contains some interesting/useful info. If this information is not vital for me, I just quit reading the article (or post) after a few lines or a few paragraphs. Recently I launched my own project and now I'm busy writing articles for it. This makes me think about the best article size, not in terms of SEO or writing quality content, but in term of user experience: what is the best article size for a user to read (without getting tired and quitting). Basically it is the question of: 1. Not discouraging users from reading an article at all (personally I sometimes just close the page when I see that the article is very long; and closing the page means leaving the site and forgetting about it.) 2. Keeping user attention to the end of the article in order to show him/her ads at the bottom of the page. Is the most often recommended article size of some 500+ words the best from this point of view? For me, 500-700 words long articles look like a long read when they are formatted in an easy-to-read column (like 40% screen width). What's your opinion?
I written hundreds of articles suitable for submission. I have found that the best reads are between 450 and 500 words. You can write longer articles but it cannot be extended by fluff. Many times I will set out to write an article thinking it will be around 500 words and it turns out to be about 650 words. Even with editing, it is easily more than 600 words. Articles written for the web must be concise. You only have a few minutes to capture and hold someone's undivided attention.
short and suite makes for an easy read and all you need in my opinion.. no more than 500 words is good.
In terms of SEO - no less than 25 and I, for the sake of the readers, would keep it less than 1,000. But 250-500 is definitely good for SEO.
I agree that more than 500 words may be somehow not okay (may look boring, for example). The trouble is that when you really have something to say, 500 words is not enough, at least for me. The first article I wrote was nearly 2000 words long, I cut it in parts, rewrote, and got 2 articles nearly 700 words long (no fluff, no general bla-bla-bla). That still looks too big. Feels like I need to think if I can make them even shorter...
Yeah, I sometimes see articles about 200-300 words long ranking #1-10 for narrow keywords (those keywords being included in the title).
I believe EzineArticles recommends 400-700 words. My articles seem to run about 450 - 550. Long enough to make a few good points, short enough that it isn't a burden to read.
The optimum article size, which most article directories want is 450-750 words. If you are doing it for your own site, and really think, that the content is good, then don't worry about the size, just write quality and useful stuff.
I would recommend around 500 words article. In the online world, people usually do not have time to follow through the whole article. Thus, thats where clear headers and the bolding of fonts comes in
This goes against what everyone else has said, but articles in the 1000 - 1500 word range have always done well for me.
I like the advice and viewpoints given here. Thank you all. I am not an established article writer...yet. But I did want to chime in as an experienced reader. I don't mind long articles if they have the following: 1) Grab my attention right from the beginning. Make certain the first sentence is right on the mark. 2) I will read a longer article if it is interesting throughout (as others have already mentioned). 3) I am more willing to read a longer article if it is broken up into small pieces. Even if it is just "page 1, page 2" etc. I am not necessarily referring to "chapters." I am referring to convenient "stopping points" that I can bookmark and come back to later to finish reading. By "stopping points" I am referring to "logical" stopping points in the article's logic...not some arbitrary word count limit or such. Just a few ideas from a reader's perspective. Hope they are helpful in some way to you.
I think, yes... Seems that those articles are being successful not due to some special keyword density, but due to low competition (the keywords are really narrow, so if you incude them in the title of the article and the title tag, you are likely to be ranked on top just because competing articles don't give so much attention to those keywords.)
I think 500-600 words are fine. But the text has to be divided in paragraphs with subtitles. Just has to have a decent layout. Also think it's better to have 2 or more short articles then 1 big article.